Coronavirus

[rdowdall]

Okay, I think I understand your position.  Having a frustration born from the idea that if different actions had been taken by the powers that be is at this point:
a) Monday morning quaterbacking those decisions in a situation that hasn't occurred in 100 years, so that's a little unfair.
b) Foolish given that there are no guarantees that a different course of actions or choices would lead to a different outcome.

I can see that point of view.  I still think we could have done some things to mitigate another province wide lockdown, but we aren't there yet, and we may not get there, so being frustrated and wanting different decisions over something that hasn't happened yet is also unfair.

I don't know about unfair but there is a small part of me that feels like it's not especially helpful if it's not tied to specific criticism of the who and the what. Because, you know, I certainly get the frustration because I feel it in daily life pre-Covid, right? Like, you're looking at this government and saying "Why haven't we come up with better responses to this disease in 2 years" and sometimes I'm saying "Hey, we're a wealthy society, how come we haven't come up with a more comprehensive social health system in 55 years?" or "How come we haven't come up with a more equitable distribution of wealth in the 170 some odd years we've existed?" and those frustrations are plenty real too.

Because, again, you want to avoid getting overly political here because this is a team effort and everything but I think you'll find that a lot of what could be done to come up with a better response relies on asking people to put collective good over individual desires and that is a concept that certain people actively discourage when it comes to our political discourse. We would be having a very different discussion about Vaccines and the necessity for lockdowns if we were at 95% as opposed to 80 or wherever we got to but getting to 95%, given how reluctant some people are, would have required drastic political action from the people running our response to the pandemic and there was never a reasonable expectation that they'd get there given how they govern and see society. We all knew that there were still millions who are unvaccinated and we knew variants were possible. If you'd been sold a false bill of goods that said that vaccinating 80% of people was enough to kill Covid forever and avoid lockdowns I think you'd be on better footing but you weren't.

As I was running through ideas, I noticed that any of them that depended on people following through on the key aspects of the idea had a lot of flaws.

I would like to go on record now as saying that if the powers that be do have information that vaccines aren't going to give us a consistent way forward of preventing these circuit breaker type of occasions, then I hope they develop a system where you have to scan your health card to get into places. 

I feel that this would solve a couple of issues.  One it provides instant contact tracing for places like the grocery store where there isn't currently any contact tracing.  Another is that it has the vaccination status built in, so if we do have to move forward with boosters, we don't have to redownload new QR codes with each booster, the status is just tied to your card.  Also, it ties a positive test result to the contact tracing data collected above.  There would be kinks that would need to be worked out, like what if you don't have a health card, but I am sure that a process can be created to work around those kinks.  I think that efficiently tying the positive test result to the contact tracing could go a long way to allowing us to selectively shut things down and mitigate the need to have the province wide circuit breaker lockdowns. 

I would also like our Province to be run by competent and forward thinking people who are willing to invest political capital and money into making our public health response better.

That would be nice.  Man, imagine a province like that.  I bet their hockey team would suck though.

 

[rdowdall]

I would also like our Province to be run by competent and forward thinking people who are willing to invest political capital and money into making our public health response better.

I just want dental and mental health coverage. How we have a society where low-middle income can't access these services is beyond me.

Also subsidized post secondary education.  Can we get that too?  Or am I being greedy now?

 

[Bender]

Up until now, Ontario government officials (Ministry of Education) have proclaimed quite loudly that schools are safe and don't require any additional safety measures beyond "wear masks unless you are eating".

Crazy how things evolve and regulations need to change.

This was already recognized by epidemiologists and teachers summer of 2020, when the government was trotting out that kids can't get or spread Covid. I think it's important that kids be in schools (for their development and mental health, and for the parents and the associated economies to operate), but it needs to be recognized that the people responsible for setting these policies had the same information we did back on page 50-60 of this thread and elected to do nothing of substance, while the downstream school boards, health care workers, and public health units bust their humps to deal with the fallout.

They should be put on trial for that level of falsehood.

 

[Bender]

I would also like our Province to be run by competent and forward thinking people who are willing to invest political capital and money into making our public health response better.

I just want dental and mental health coverage. How we have a society where low-middle income can't access these services is beyond me.

Also subsidized post secondary education.  Can we get that too?  Or am I being greedy now?

I would absolutely and gladly pay more in taxes if they'd do this. People shouldn't be shackled to ill fitting positions or poorly paid jobs because it's too expensive to retrain.

 

[Zee]

So glad we got our boosters when they first let 50+ book. I booked last Monday and got the shot Tuesday, crazy seeing the lineups on the news now of people just waiting.

 

[Bender]

So glad we got our boosters when they first let 50+ book. I booked last Monday and got the shot Tuesday, crazy seeing the lineups on the news now of people just waiting.

Shoppers seemed to let me book for yesterday somehow, which I'm grateful for. I booked my parents through the provincial portal for Jan 5 but quickly pivoted to Shoppers when I saw they had pre Christmas slots available. And I managed to snag a spot for my pregnant sister on Christmas Eve!

 

[herman]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7161499/
Since we are at the N95 shortage stage of the pandemic again, the above link has low cost (basically free) recommendations from the inventor (Dr. Tsai) on how to safely re-use N95 masks for medical settings.

 

[madkenstalin]

So glad we got our boosters when they first let 50+ book. I booked last Monday and got the shot Tuesday, crazy seeing the lineups on the news now of people just waiting.

Any side effects? I had a sore arm, that was it. Partner was knocked out for a whole day.
Both had 2x AZ and 1xPfizer booster.

 

[Kin]

It really does seem like the Ontario government's approach to everything is to make procuring vaccines or tests or anything as chaotic and frenzied as possible.

 

[L K]

It really does seem like the Ontario government's approach to everything is to make procuring vaccines or tests or anything as chaotic and frenzied as possible.

It's not malicious.  It's just incompetence.  Every decision has some rationale to it if it was done properly.  The issue is these decisions have all been made with poor foresight on implementation.  It's what happens when you elect a buffoon.

 

[Heroic Shrimp]

https://twitter.com/covontario/status/1474388218523045894

We?re gonna need a bigger y-axis.

 

[herman]

We?re gonna need a bigger y-axis.

https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474390710019366914
https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474398949767266306

https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474400621868552193
Still too early to say if this holds steady at separating the blue line (hospitalizations) from the red (cases), but vaccinations (and third doses) should blunt the effect, even though people are freely roaming and associating.

 

[Guilt Trip]

ICU numbers went down 5 from yesterday so that's a positive. Hopefully this strain is indeed milder.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

Because it can't always be about the buffoonery of Doug Ford, perhaps some hope on the horizon in South Africa.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/south-africas-decline-in-new-covid-19-cases-may-indicate-omicron-peak-has-passed

 

[Bender]

We?re gonna need a bigger y-axis.

https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474390710019366914
https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474398949767266306

https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1474400621868552193
Still too early to say if this holds steady at separating the blue line (hospitalizations) from the red (cases), but vaccinations (and third doses) should blunt the effect, even though people are freely roaming and associating.

Most of those curves for hospitalization followed very closely. Even if the trend doesn't hold entirely it's still better than the alternative...

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/edtubb/status/1474419161011040260

 

[Zee]

So glad we got our boosters when they first let 50+ book. I booked last Monday and got the shot Tuesday, crazy seeing the lineups on the news now of people just waiting.

Any side effects? I had a sore arm, that was it. Partner was knocked out for a whole day.
Both had 2x AZ and 1xPfizer booster.

Just a sore arm for me too, wife was a bit extra tired but that's about it

 

[Bender]

So glad we got our boosters when they first let 50+ book. I booked last Monday and got the shot Tuesday, crazy seeing the lineups on the news now of people just waiting.

Any side effects? I had a sore arm, that was it. Partner was knocked out for a whole day.
Both had 2x AZ and 1xPfizer booster.

Just a sore arm for me too, wife was a bit extra tired but that's about it

I was knocked out but not as bad as the second shot. Easily worth it though.

 

[Frank E]

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-to-meet-with-cabinet-to-discuss-ontario-s-plan-for-schools-in-january-sources-say-1.5722295

On Tuesday, Ford told reporters he would finalize and announce his decision on whether schools will reopen by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, more than 500 Ontario doctors have signed an open letter to the Ford government asking to keep schools open in January.

The doctors said government must not use provincial school closures as a means to control the spread of the disease.

"School closures should no longer be a knee-jerk reaction to rising case counts. Numerous jurisdictions have committed to keeping schools open and we need to do the same," the letter states.

 

[Bender]

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-to-meet-with-cabinet-to-discuss-ontario-s-plan-for-schools-in-january-sources-say-1.5722295

On Tuesday, Ford told reporters he would finalize and announce his decision on whether schools will reopen by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, more than 500 Ontario doctors have signed an open letter to the Ford government asking to keep schools open in January.

The doctors said government must not use provincial school closures as a means to control the spread of the disease.

"School closures should no longer be a knee-jerk reaction to rising case counts. Numerous jurisdictions have committed to keeping schools open and we need to do the same," the letter states.

I understand this but it's kind of meaningless if we aren't doing anything to actually, you know, protect kids. Pediatric hospitalizations are going up.

https://twitter.com/DFisman/status/1475181826037723137?t=Dck0qAZWXDMcWUmCr7PoNw&s=19


Also, are these doctors really this stupid?

"little to no COVID-19 transmission occurring in the school setting.?

By all means make your case, but don't use absolute nonsense we knew to be untrue way back in the early days of the pandemic. Kids aren't magically able to spread every pathogen possible (and give to their parents or grandparents) but not covid.

I'd like to see which doctors and what fields they're in that signed off on this.